I took the screen off yesterday to take a look at the guns. I have read about new coolant and the symptoms matched exactly, so I had a good feeling without looking- I just got around to pulling the screen off to have a look. My blue looks like snow really bad, the green is slightly better, but a lot of snow, and to my suprise the red has what appears to be "crystals". I noticed that the mirror looks like it has dots on it and has smudges that I can not get off with lense cleaner and micro fiber cloth. I found a small fiber of a paper towel on one corner of the mirror board, so I suspect someone has tried toclean it before and I have read not to press to hard- My mother in law bought this set a year ago from her sister and the color was washed in the center at that time. She just gave the set to us last week. I took a look at your link. $178.68- really??? I know you probably have paid advertisers and its not recomended to use non Philips parts, but is there anyone who sells plastic mirror materil that I could cut to size myself? $39.25 for 3 bottles of coolant and denatured alc. is tapping the budget as it is. The recession has been tough on us. I cant place an order for coolant untill the end of the month. I am greatfull for the info. on here. There is no way my wife and I could afford to have a repair person to change the coolant. Doing it myself will cut the cost dramatically, so I am thankfull this site is here.

you can ask a local glass place to cut a mirror to size for you. I expect it will be pretty close to that price though. It won't be as good as the actual part because the glass will be on the front side of the mirror instead of the reflective coating being on the surface. You won't be happy with the image after reflective film.

Honestly, if money is tight, I'd recommend a used smaller TV off craigslist. I see 32-36 inch CRT TV advertised for well under $100 on a regular basis. Since your TV needs both a coolant change, a new mirror, and probably new convergence chips this is not a small investment.

(FYI, this website doesn't get any commission whatsoever from any TVpart sales.)

I did some searching and found some sheeting that is coated on both sides. Will temp. be a problem? I would not want to put something in that is going to melt. Does changing a mirror that has been cleaned to hard and has the little spots on it really effect tha pic. on the screen that much?
http://mirrorsheeting.com/

I'm sorry, but I feel like I need to be very direct with you. You're asking us to answer questions that no one has experience with. I'm not sure what kind of response you're expecting. We fix TVs with normal TV parts, it's what we do.

You're very welcome to try something else on your own, but we can't tell you how the results will turn out, because no one here does that.